Courage for Life for Men - Flipbook - Page 16
C O U R AG E O U S M E N O F FA I T H
1502
Jesse Bushyhead
C O U R A G E O U S LY C O M M I T T E D
Jesse Bushyhead was born in 1804 on a small Cherokee settlement in
Tennessee. He was raised in indigenous Cherokee culture. At the age of
twenty-six, Jesse was baptized as a Christian, and he was ordained as a
minister several years later. He then established and pastored a church
in his hometown.
Jesse was known as a gifted interpreter. He formed a ministry
partnership with Welsh missionary Evan Jones, who preached in English
while Jesse translated into the Cherokee language. Jesse became an
assistant missionary with the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions and
translated parts of the Bible and other Christian books into Cherokee.
During the 1830s, the US government forced self-governing indigenous
nations to give up their farms and homes in the southeastern United
States and move west of the Mississippi River. After gold was discovered
in the southeastern United States, all treaties with the Cherokee nation
that protected their ancestral homelands were declared null and void.
Cherokees were ordered to move west into what is now the state of
Oklahoma. Jesse protested this treatment but was unable to negotiate
a resolution.
Large groups of Cherokee people were rounded up like cattle by
soldiers and forced from their ancestral homelands on a journey that
came to be known as the Trail of Tears. Food was scarce. One-fourth of
all Cherokees who made the journey died, often from whooping cough,
cholera, or drowning while crossing rivers. Jesse led one group of nearly
1,000 people. Throughout the six-month journey, Jesse continued to
pastor his people.
On arriving in Oklahoma, Jesse established a church. He became the
chief justice of the Cherokee nation in 1840 and served in that capacity
until 1844, when he died after a brief illness. Jesse loved his people, the
Cherokee. He led many of them to Christ and served them as a pastor
during tragic circumstances. The monument at his grave describes him
as a devoted Christian, noble in character and heart.
In the face of injustice and suffering, Jesse remained devoted to God
and to his people. When you suffer injustice or oppression, how will you
remain loyal first to the Lord and also to those who rely on you? What
step will you take today to courageously stand firm in this commitment?
Learn more about Jesse Bushyhead’s courageous story in Cherokee in Controversy: The
Life of Jesse Bushyhead by Dan B. Wimberly.
